Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

Birdlife banner photo by Georgina Steytler

BirdLife Australia has launched a new annual bird photography competition.  Submissions are now open and close on Monday 6 August.  There are seven different categories as well as a youth segment.

You can find all the information on this Birdlife website.

Castlemaine has a new Birdlife Branch and Birdlife is visiting next weekend with their ‘Act for Birds’ roadshow. Jane Rusden, Convener of Castlemaine District BirdLife Group has asked FOBIF to publicise this event which be focused on grassroots advocacy, with short presentations by Beth Melick and Brendon Sydes. Local artists also have organised some fun for the kids. The group is only a few days old, so they will be celebrating the launch of Castlemaine District Birdlife Branch at the same time, with lunch and cake included. All welcome.

When: 12:30 – 3pm, Saturday 7 July
Where: Tea Room, Castlemaine Botanic Gardens, 2 Walker St, Castlemaine

You can find out more in this press release.

Signs: they’re everywhere, maybe too many of them. But when they start to decay, you’d have to say they give the neighbourhood a neglected character. And the signs around our public land are definitely looking neglected: out of date, rotting, falling over, they’re symptoms of the underfunding of public land management.

Poverty Gully water race: many of the signs in our bushland are in decay, sending a message that ‘no one cares’.

This air of neglect—the sense that nobody cares—is arguably one of the reasons our bushlands can be targets of abuse. If no one cares, why not dump rubbish in the bush, or ride a trail bike down an inviting gully? It’s only a bit of scrub, after all…

And here’s a twist: there are parts of our bush where we have not one, but two signs, as if DELWP’s supply chain suddenly blew a fuse and started to supply duplicates randomly around the region. Famine, feast, famine…Figure that out.

Porcupine Ridge Road: if you’re not sure the first sign is right, check it against the second!

There’s rubbish and rubbish. Some dumped stuff is lethal—asbestos comes to mind. Some is a serious pest—like garden weeds that threaten to spread into the bush. Some is an eyesore that tells you the dumper has no respect for public space, and certainly no sense of responsibility for it. Think about mattresses and plastic junk.

Running shoe in Kalimna Park: unexpected habitat. Photo: Bronwyn Silver.

And some rubbish is just plain eccentric. What’s this single running shoe doing alongside the Kalimna Circuit Track? Well, one thing it’s doing is providing nice moss habitat: a reminder that sometimes rubbish can have unexpected effects—remember the dumped mattress colonised by a phascogale? This is no defence of dumping, of course. It’s one of the scourges of public land managers, and seems to get worse: it’s now costing Victorians $30 million a year in cleanup and other costs.

Got a moment? Have a look at these two winter gems:

First, the ever reliable Wombat Forestcare Newsletter, with high quality articles on  luminous fungi, fire in the Wombat, and a fascinating glimpse of the ‘world’s rarest fungus’, found on only one tree in the Wombat Forest…

And second, the North Central Chat, which has a great article by Bev Phillips on the old trees of Maldon. A sample:

‘Of the 61 pre-1852 original eucalypt trees recorded on public and private land in Maldon, 64 percent are Eucalyptus microcarpa (Grey Box); there are eight Eucalyptus goniocalyx (Long-leaved Box), eight Eucalyptus polyanthemos subsp. Vestita  (Red Box) and three Eucalyptus melliodora  (Yellow Box).  The recorded trees are estimated to be aged between 175 and 530 years old; 49 trees are estimated to be 200-399 years old and there are three trees estimated to be aged 400-499 years and one tree 530 years. This means that 80 percent of the trees are estimated to have started growing between the years of 1618 and 1817.’

Check them out.

Here’s a reminder: you have two days to give an opinion on the draft plan for indigenous co management of five parks in north central Victoria.

We’ve noticed a bit of negativity in some web discussion groups about this proposal, based, as far as we can see, on misconceptions, or worse. In our opinion the draft proposal is a generous effort to be inclusive of all groups in the community. An example, from the document:

‘Prospecting continues to be welcome in many areas of the Parks. However careful examination of the registered Aboriginal Cultural Heritage sites identified four areas with a high density of sites where prospecting is currently allowed. In addition, three small fauna refuges that include significant cultural heritage, and where prospecting is currently allowed, were identified. It is proposed to restrict prospecting in these seven areas to protect the significant heritage values.’

In other words, some tweaking has been done to arrangements for this activity. Unfortunately this has been interpreted by some as follows: ‘Dja Dja Wurrung are taking over the management and banning various user groups…prospectors would be excluded from this land grab.’ [Quotes are from a Castlemaine website.’]

Facts are still facts. Let’s judge things on that basis, and not on prejudice and rumour.